Even though the last place Padres baseball team made somewhat of a comeback, based to a good extent on recent acquisitions from trades and farm teams, it is worthwhile to look at the comments and actions of the new owner and team in general.
For example, CEO Jeff Moorad’s first major actions were in relation to the business side of the ball club rather than player development. There is no questioning the fact that the internal structure of the team is very important. But should it be the number one priority when the team is on a major losing streak?
All the more surprising is that Moorad is a former player agent who should know the value of having and developing a high level player. Many player agents today seek out the services of trainers to get their players ready for competition.
When it comes to developing a better team it appears that one of his first major actions will be to look more closely at the free-agent market. This means that they will be back to playing the educated guessing and hoping game. In other words, they will buy a player in the hopes that he will play well and make the team better.
Is this however, the most effective route that can be taken? From past experiences the answer is obviously no. But yet, this appears to be the number one method that teams use for improving the teams. The concept of improving player performance still escapes them.
Instead, teams prefer to do one or more of the following in the hopes of getting a better team:
- Look more closely at the free agency market
- Look more to recruiting or buying “athletic” players
- Get better coaching staffs
- Have better recruiting
- Recruit better to fill the minor league teams
- Develop more training centers in foreign countries
- Buy more top names
- Sign more foreign-born players
Carrying out one or more of these actions can prove to be successful, but only for a limited amount of time. The odds are against long-term improvement mainly because these courses of action remain a guessing game. In other words, they will be making guesses in relation to the players based on the information that they have.
If they guess well, they become geniuses; if they guess poorly, they get fired. In some cases, they will have excuses such as too many injuries, not enough experience, everyone in a slump at the same time and so on. As can be seen, these methods cannot be relied upon for any sustained success.
Teams do not use the science of improving a player’s performance through improvement of his skills and related physical abilities. We hear words to the effect that they do this, but if anyone investigated, they would find that there were only words not actions.
As I stated many times before, the knowledge is available, it only needs implementation. This is done to a great extent in many successful sports nations. This includes Japan and Korea, countries that dominate the World Baseball Classic. Why is there no implementation in this country?
For more information on player development see Build a Better Athlete and Sports: Is It All BS?.